You need to get to know your coursemates

Or better still, sign up with a friend. At Level 2, you more or less turn up once a week and never even have to look your coursemates in the eye if you don’t want to.

However, in addition to your written exam Level 3, you have a blind tasting assessment. Our teacher Melanie at the East London Wine School — which, by the way, will be exhibiting at our Wine & Spirits Show on 12th-13th October — told us to start a Whatsapp group so we could arrange study groups outside of our timetabled lessons.

Every month, about two weeks after each lesson, we’d meet up at a wine bar like Vagabond and practice our tasting notes. Success was mixed, but it really is useful to do this in a group. Once you’ve completed your notes, you can swap them around, correct each other, and realise you’re all in the same boat. The study groups were simultaneously terrifying and reassuring.